Kouwe loses second job

Zachery Kouwe, the New York Times business reporter who resigned after being accused of plagiarism, has been let go from a freelance business reporting job at Dealbreaker.com.

Felix Salmon writes, “I spoke to Matt Creamer, the executive editor of Breaking Media, Dealbreaker’s parent. He sent me this statement:

Zachery Kouwe was a freelance contributor on Dealbreaker for just over two months. We ended the relationship on Thursday after it came to our attention that he wrote emails to Dealbreaker commenters referencing their workplaces. Our readers and commenters trust us with personal information and we take that responsibility very seriously. Anyone who registers on our sites should feel confident their information is secure.

“For the backstory, read the comments to this blog entry — the last one that Kouwe posted on the site. One anonymous commenter — and Dealbreaker prizes its commenters’ anonymity greatly — wrote that ‘Kouwe e-mailed me the other day to tell me he ‘knew’ where I worked’, and later posted a screenshot of the emails in question. It seems that Kouwe obtained the commenter’s email address — presumably through his privileged access to the commenter login system — and then emailed the commenter to tell him exactly where he worked. And this didn’t only happen once, as a different commenter explained:

It crosses a line when Zach sends unsolicited emails to posters (which I can bear witness too although in my instance it was entirely harmless). Many of us work at shops where unapproved communication with media outlets quickly leads to termination.

“Dealbreaker’s editor, Bess Levin, replied:

What happened is NOT condoned by Dealbreaker and you can rest assured we’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure it will not be happening again.”

Read more here.